JEFF PRESTRIDGE: We may be visiting the shops less, but our country needs banks on its High Streets

Another week and yet more evidence that the high street as we know it is crumbling before our very eyes.

This time, the evidence, taken from 500 major town centres, is supplied by professional services firm PwC and states that 16 shops a day were forced to close their doors for the last time in the first half of this year.

All very depressing, according to PwC’s retail gurus, especially when put against the backdrop of an improving economy. But yet all so predictable when you consider that more of us (not all of us) now prefer to shop from the comfort of our armchair, a glass of Viognier in hand and computer on lap.

Boarded up: 16 shops a day were forced to close their doors for the last time in the first half of this year

Only the combined opening of betting shops, yet more coffee outlets and American restaurants (burger joints) are preventing a near total devastation of the high street. Unfortunately, it seems that matters are not going to get any better – economic recovery or not.

Last week, a reader from Cardiff tipped me off that his local HSBC branch in Cardiff Bay is shutting in early December – a great shame, he says, because the bank has been there for nigh on 100 years and is no more than 100 yards from the Coal Exchange where the first £1million cheque was signed 100 years ago when coal was king. How times change.

The closure is one of 19 that HSBC is implementing between now and the end of the year as it continues to chip away at the size of its branch network – and is on top of the 46 it has already shut this year. In its defence, however, it is opening a new ‘flagship’ branch in Southampton – a fact HSBC is keen for me to point out and I am happy to oblige.

Equally though, I must make it clear that three existing branches in Southampton will be sacrificed to make way for it. And to think I went through university believing in EF Schumacher’s economic theory that small is beautiful.

HSBC, of course, is not alone among the banks who believe they are too big to fail, in taking an axe to its branches. Both Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (as we reported last week) continue to reduce the size of their networks while Lloyds Banking Group is on the verge of announcing a major cost reduction programme, in which branch closures will be a prominent feature.

I am sure some town centres will survive these branch closures – especially where a banking competitor remains in situ – and there will be little or no protest from that part of the public who are increasingly happy to embrace armchair banking.

But in other locations, where the closure will result in the end of any high street banking, the knock-on effect on local retailers could well be cataclysmic.

It’s why we as a newspaper will continue to campaign for a banking presence in every town and village in this country – even if it means forcing the bosses of the big banks to push their mighty egos to one side and agree to shared premises.

This country needs banks on its high streets.

Stamp duty on home purchases is an absurd tax applied in an unfair way. And it is to the Government’s great discredit that it has failed to reform it. North of the border, however, reform is on the way.

On stamp duty, the Scots have shown the way ahead. It is time to seize the moment

From April next year, stamp duty will be replaced by land and buildings transaction tax. And although the new tax is not without fault, it will undoubtedly be an improvement on its predecessor.

This is because increased tax rates will only apply to the value of a property over each threshold once it is crossed instead of applying to the whole value of the transaction each time it reaches a threshold, as is the case with stamp duty.

So, Scotland’s new property tax means that transactions under £135,000 will be exempt. Then between £135,001 and £250,000, buyers will pay 2 per cent tax but only on the sum above the nil-rate threshold of £135,000.

Any slice of a property’s purchase price above £250,000 and below £1 million will incur a 10 per cent tax charge while above £1 million, a 12 per cent charge applies. This contrasts with the current situation across the UK where no tax applies on transactions up to £125,000 but purchases above this attract a tax charge of between one per cent and seven per cent dependent on the price paid.

Pay £250,000, for example, and you will incur a one per cent stamp duty charge. But pay £1 more for your dream home and you will end up with a three per cent charge on the entire price. Madness.

A number of lenders – with Nationwide Building Society very much to the fore – have long called for the reform of stamp duty. Although 10 per cent and 12 per cent charges are too high, the Scots have shown the Government the way forward. It should seize the moment and act.